Trial lawyer advocates at Texas Watch are promoting trial lawyer views
(Austin, TX) Texans for Lawsuit Reform issued the following statement today in response to the release of a report by Texas Watch entitled, “Thumbs on the Scale: A Retrospective of the Texas Supreme Court.”
In considering the deeply flawed findings of this “report,” Texans need to have the facts about Texas Watch, the group that authored this report. Texas Watch is a pro-trial lawyer group that has worked for over a decade to overthrow tort reforms and increase opportunities to sue.
Texas Watch is not a consumer advocacy group and, in fact, works against consumer interests as they push the trial lawyer agenda in Texas. If they were successful, our state would create fewer jobs and consumers would have less income.
- The president of Texas Watch is also the president of a trial lawyer PAC, the Texas Values in Action Coalition, funded almost exclusively by trial lawyers. She has been paid tens of thousands of dollars by another trial lawyer PAC, the Texas Progress Council, which was founded by the late Fred Baron, a notorious asbestos lawyer.
- The spokesman for the Texas Trial Lawyers Association (TTLA) is a member of Texas Watch’s seven member board.
- Two other members of the Texas Watch Board are personal injury trial lawyers and members of TTLA. One also serves on the American Association for Justice Board (formerly the American Trial Lawyers Association).
- Texas Watch openly opposed medical liability reforms in 2003. They were both advocates and contributors to Texans Against Proposition 12.
- Contrary to their “pro-consumer” pretense, particularly on issues relating to insurance, they did not speak out against the massive attorneys’ fees that went to trial lawyers instead of consumers in the TWIA-Ike settlements.
Texans for Lawsuit Reform, the state’s largest civil justice reform organization, is a bipartisan, volunteer-led coalition with more than 17,000 supporters residing in more than 869 Texas communities and representing 1,253 different businesses, professions and trades. For more information, visit www.tortreform.com.
